South America is in the middle of the continents ranked by area--smaller than Asia, Africa, and North America, but bigger than Antarctica, Europe, and Australia/Oceania. However, for a relatively small landmass, South America presents an embarassment of geographical riches: the biggest river in the world, the largest rainforest, the driest desert, and, dominating its western edge, the longest single mountain range in the world: the Andes.

For the most part, the Andes are synonomous with mountains in South America. Stretching from northeastern Venzuela to the Strait of Magellan, the 4,000 mile arc of the Andes is up there with the Himalaya/Central Asia complex and the western North American cordilleran system as one of the dominant mountain groupings of the world.

Argentina's Aconcagua (22,835'/6960m) is famous as the highest peak in the western hemisphere, but Andean peaks rise to over 20,000'/6100m in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador as well, and Colombia (18865'/5750m) and Venzuela (16427'/5007m) are not far behind. Make no mistake, these are big, glaciated, and serious mountains for almost their entire length.

Two broad highland areas in eastern South America are insignificant mountaineering-wise when compared to the Andes, but they do cover large areas of the continent. The Guiana Highlands of Brazil, Venzuela, and Guyana are famous as the site of Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall. They are also a mysterious, inaccesible, jungle-shrouded wilderness of cliff-sided plateaus that have inspired imaginary words from the time of Raleigh's El Dorado, through Conan Doyle's Lost World, to the present. Pico da Neblina (9888'/3014m) is the highest in the Guiana Highlands, but Roraima (9219'/2810m), looking like a ship's prow splitting the jungle, is perhaps the most famous peak.